Lack of a functional democracy is the problem, not socialism.

> Lack of a functional democracy is the problem, not socialism.

It's entirely possible to democratically decide to steal the means of production from the capitalists — and thus experience exactly these consequences.

Nobody is saying socialism is inherently bad here. The Nordic model, for instance, still has a free market means of production. Socialist safety nets are fine.

Venezuela has for years had a full-on centrally planned economy with the state setting the prices for goods independent of their costs of production, all as a tool to continue winning electoral support from the poor. That is a very, very nasty aspect of a socialist system, which is avoided by successful socialist nations.

Edit: This was meant to be a reply to the parent comment.

I cant recall a single example of a functional democracy in a socialist government. Seems to be mutually exclusive outputs.

Venezuela elected Chavez in at least three internationally verified and observed elections (1998, 2000, 2006).

Having democrat elections is not the same of having a functional democracy.

Exactly what I pointed out, although it seems some didn't like my comment.

He was elected democratically, but then he behaved like a dictator. He was not aware of his ignorance in economics, and he had to support of the people. The results were disastrous.

>He was elected democratically, but then he behaved like a dictator.

He was elected democratically to behave like a dictator. Most dictatorships advertise quite clearly what they intend to do.

@eudox. Rigged elections.

"Of course democracy is not incompatible with Communism. How could it be when the people are enthusiastic supporters of Communism?"

There were/are enthusiastic supporters for some of the worst causes.[1]

Also, historically, comunism did not support occidental democracy systems.[2]

[1]http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/new-isis-islamic-state-daesh-a...

[2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/xx/principles....

Firstly, that's not how replies work. Secondly, no, they were not rigged elections. A couple of links:

https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/297.pdf

http://eeas.europa.eu/eueom/missions/2006/venezuela/index_en...

Of course democracy is not incompatible with Communism. How could it be when the people are enthusiastic supporters of Communism?

There have been countless statistical anomalies on all elections since 2004; like voting centers with 0 abstention and 100% votes pro-government on extremely remote locations without oversight from the opposition.

But please, continue lecturing me on my country's electoral and voting system.

>since 2004

That's after two Chavez elections. Then the people were voting for Communism well before the elections were rigged in an observable way

>The people were voting for Communism

Clearly, the world has always been filled with idiots full of resentment towards people that made better decisions and became more successful.

So there you go. That's how Communism is compatible with democracy. It burns the same fuel: the promise of mass political power.

Uhhh... how about almost every Nordic country?

Then probably we are not referring to the same thing when we talk about socialism.

If you're using "socialism" as a bugaboo, probably not. It has a broad meaning, like "democracy", but it's not always a bad thing.

I was referring socialism as a society where state does not allow private property (at least to a major extent), and violates individual human rights in favor of collective ones.

You're confusing "socialism" with "communist". Socialist societies do not, as a rule, limit ownership of private property. Any that do are usually socialist and something else, like totalitarian or communist.

Likewise a socialist state does not necessarily limit individual freedoms. Communist regimes have, but they're also totalitarian, so which philosophy is to blame is sometimes hard to pin down.

Modern communist societies have also relaxed these restrictions significantly, though there were times when everything was forced communal.

It's entirely possible to have the same result via crony capitalism instead. The problem is too much power in the hands of too few people. It doesn't matter what label their government claims to fall under at this point.

Says the person who has never lived under socialism.

We were a functioning democracy, in fact we were the most stable and rich country in latin america.

Socialism has led to a non–functioning democracy, shortages, massive crime and violence.

Funny, these systems always end up in this state, but it's never the system that causes it!

How many more examples do you need before you recognize the obvious pattern?

You need to read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. He explains how giving the State the power to make all the economic decisions necessarily devolves into this kind of dystopia.

The government was elected with overwhelming support.

Being elected and actually governing in a functional manner are two different things.

Corruption, actually. Their neighboring states aren't any better off.

What's hitting them now is a decade of mismanagement of their petro-business... Combined with a collapse in oil prices. If Colombia's exports dropped in price by 60%, things would not be pretty. Fortunately, unlike Venezuela, its economy is far more diverse.

I'm sorry, but that's not at all accurate. If you think the middle class in Colombia and Brazil are dealing with anything remotely like this, you are nuts.

Corruption is a parasite which adds costs to every resource flow it can find, but this is a wholly different scenario of resources being too scarce due to systemic degradation due to central planning misallocation combined with the drop in oil prices that had sustained it.

I'll give you middle class, but what does the lower class (Which is far larger then the middle class) in Colombia and Brazil end up dealing with?

> central planning misallocation

Having somebody in charge of the economy that does not understand that he doesn't understand how the economy works.

You can't generalize. Certainly Hugo Chavez didn't.

Since Venezuela was a democracy you could also argue that democracies wreak havoc in the economy.

I am not generalising. But whilst you are at it pin water to it as socialists drink water as well.

Colombian here. You can't even compare the situation to what's happening in Venezuela. There's a lot of corruption in south america but Venezuela is total disaster right now because of the totalitarian goverment.

> You can't even compare the situation to what's happening in Venezuela.

Well having the US send $1 billion a year, year after year to prop your country up ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia ) helps.

Sending $1 billion a year since the start of Plan Colombia (1996) implies Colombia would have received over $20 billion by now. In reality the amount of American aid to Colombia is about half of that.

And American aid does not come in cash, the money can only be spent in shiny new American-made military hardware. That's why the Colombian army has lots of Humvees and Black Hawks, paid for the U.S. taxpayer.

It really is a poorly disguised subsidy to the American military industrial complex.

In any case, considering Colombia has the second largest GDP in South America (after Brazil) at about $300 billion a year, receiving even $1 billion a year would be statistically speaking, noise.